When Compassion Dies
by give-in-to-love
Summary: All she wanted was to be a mother. But her child and her death were stolen away from her. Esme's story.
1. Chapter 1: Look Before You Fall

Title: When Compassion Dies

Pairing: Esme/Carlisle

Summary: Pre-Twilight story of Esme starting with her conversion and continuing until Twilight starts.

A/N: Hey. I'm a bit rusty because my writing has been on hold for awhile. But this story basically wrote up itself when I needed to de-stress so I felt as though I should share it.

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Chapter One: Look Before You Fall

The tops of the cliffs are slippery and I try not to think about my fear of heights. It is peaceful up here, the smell of the sea, the sounds of the waves, it lulls me. I wish it could comfort me. I wish I could close my eyes and when they opened again, everything would be right. I try it now, for a few seconds. But I only hear my father's voice, telling me to stop living in my little fantasy world. I open my eyes and look to the horizon. "I'm coming baby." I whisper to the breeze before letting my body fall forward, my weight dragging me down to almost certain death. The wind feels comforting as it rushes past me and I am glad that I am left with at least one pleasant sensation before my body hits the hard ocean below. I can feel the bones breaking, the pain exploding behind my eyes. I have succeeded; the water is filling my mouth.

But arms wrap around me, painfully crushing the ribs I had already decimated. "Call an ambulance." I hear. I black out mercifully for a period of time and am disappointed when I come to. I am still alive, still apart from my son. And now I am on a gurney and these meddlesome doctors are going to save me.

"Too much damage, it's useless. Just take her to the morgue; we're too backed up for people who don't want to live." I hear after being painfully poked several times, but too weak to cry out.

Morgue, my heart rejoices, they are going to let me die. I manage to open my eyes without too much pain to see the dimly lit ceiling of the morgue. I recognize it only because just a day ago I was signing away what was left of my son to a funeral home. I am dying, I know it. But there is someone else in the room with me and I wonder who it is. Perhaps a doctor to make me comfortable when I die. The person moves into my eye line and I spasm with reaction. I know him. He set a broken bone that I had, nine, ten years ago. But it's impossible, he hasn't aged. He moves over me to meet me eyes. He has the most beautiful golden eyes I have ever seen, filled with compassion. I feel something inside of my broken body that I have never felt before.

And now I am regretting my decision to die. Because I want him. I have never wanted a man before like this. He leans to whisper in my ear.

"I am going to help you. But it is going to hurt." His voice is musical and I am suddenly back on target.

This beautiful doctor is going to give me my death. I will be reunited with my baby boy. I try to nod, but my muscles seem not to be working. He bends down from me ear to my neck and presses a light kiss to my skin. I feel his teeth break my skin and before I can straighten out what exactly is happening, I am overcome with more excoriating pain.

When I was a little girl, people never asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was always assumed I would be like every other woman. I would marry, have children, keep house. It was expected of me. I trained intensively with dolls and then graduated onto real babies. I never had the normal rebellious teenage stage. I never wanted anything other than to be a mother. Yes I loved to build and design, but I loved comforting a child more. I was eager to grow up and marry, if only to have children.

My parents agreed with the first man who ever asked for my hand. A mistake. I didn't love him, but I had managed to convince myself that I could learn to. I was just a girl then, pretending to be a woman. That all changed on my wedding night, and on the nights thereafter. When he wasn't forcing himself on me, he was beating me. I remained silent, fearful that I deserved this abuse, that it was my fault. Love seemed to be a foreign concept, an imaginary situation created by others to deceive.

I escaped into my drawings, my design. The creativity flowed easily onto paper as fantastical designs began slowly revealing themselves to me in my mind's eye. It was where I could escape from the horrors of my marriage. Until the day I found out I was pregnant. It was no longer my own body crumpled and lifeless that I saw when he hurt me, but that also of a child, my child. He couldn't keep on hitting me, it would kill either me and the baby, and I wasn't going to let him do that. My belly was growing slowly, but life was in there. And I knew love.

I ran, the first time in my life I had ever been disobedient.

It was easy to beg for help in a new town, only miles away from my real home. An older couple took me in after I lied to them and told them my husband had been killed. I think they saw the truth in my eyes, the way I flinched slightly when somebody moved too fast next to me. The way sobs had a way of escaping unwarranted from deep in my soul at night.

As I grew heavy with child, I worked as much as I could at the local store, trying to save enough money for my baby and my future. I could be independent. It was a dirty word for woman in that age. My whole life I had been taught that I would need a man to be successful. But I was not looking for success, only that elusive happiness.

I loved the child inside me completely, but it wasn't enough. The doctors said he wasn't ready to be born. He came anyway. The first few days, I was convinced that he would deny their assumptions and survive. He died anyway. My heart died with him and after burying him in a small coffin in a pretty little cemetery, I went up to the cliffs. All I wanted was to be a mother.

It hurts, dying. I writhe in pain, despite the arms that are supporting me. I am being transported somewhere, but I can't think through the burning. It hurts more than the landing of my jump did. I scream and hear someone talking. But their voice is lost on me as I twist in agony. Something must be wrong, dying can't be this painful. Mercifully, I black out.

My baby boy was beautiful. Long, dark eyelashes, sweet light eyes. I cuddled his small body close to my chest. He is having trouble nursing, but the nurses told me I must make him. He needs the nourishment and a mother's milk is the best. He would not latch and I hummed sweet lullabies hoping to coax him. Finally he managed it. It was painful at first, but once the milk started flowing, I went numb. He stopped way too soon and they took him away from me. It was lonely on the hospital bed and my breasts were aching for him to nurse again. It never happened.

There is a piano playing somewhere. It is a truly beautiful sound and it comforts me when I can hear it over my agony. Sometimes I hear voices as well, both males. I wonder what is taking so long, why death is eluding me. I spasm as the burning ricochets through me and I can hear the piano again sweetly playing my death song.

They released me from the hospital two days after I had given birth. They never released my son. I went to visit him every day, to encourage him to nurse, to survive. Emergency fluids had to be supplied intravenously and when I held my baby I had to be always vigilant of the tubes. I held him close to me and hummed a lullaby I knew from my childhood. He went still in my arms when the song was finished and my tears fell silently on his still body. A nurse turned to ask me something, her face falling when she saw my precious baby boy, dead in my arms. They took him away, cleaned him up, and sent him to the morgue. Wait for me, I called to the air, hoping to catch his soul as it began its journey to Heaven.

The pain is different now, slightly more tolerable. I wonder if death is next. It has been much too long already. I am eager to leave this place, eager to be with my son. The face of the beautiful doctor spasms into my mind and I concentrate on his face as pain vibrates through me.

I can now distinguish the voices and the piano that sometimes plays is clearer and nearer. The burning feels different as if it is all coming to an end.

"How long?"

"Not much longer, what can you hear?"

"Not much Carlisle."

"I found her husband. He already found a new wife after she left. He's beating the new girl too."

"Should I play another piece? She seems in less pain when I do."

This short conversation confuses me. How did they know that my husband beat me? It is a secret I have never told anyone. Suddenly, my heart speeds up and I jump in the strongest surge of pain yet. My heart is pounding, pounding, pounding and then it stops. But I do not.

I am not dead.

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Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2: The Pain Too Much to Bear

Chapter Two: The Pain Too Much to Bear

It is sweet, the air, filled with new smells. I sit up, surprised by my fluidity. I must be dead. There is no possible explanation for my bones to mend this quickly. My eyesight has improved too and I look in wonderment at my pale hand. It is then I realize I am not alone and quickly, much too quickly, spring to a corner. I want to attack the strangers and I want to know where the urge to attack is coming from. I refuse to let violence conquer me as it had my husband.

The strange room I am in is small, only a bed and an upright piano. The piano that I heard while I burned. And the strangers in the room are not really strangers, at least one of them is not The doctor who set my bone so many years ago is standing close to the bed, looking as perfect as he did ten years ago. I am surprised at how fuzzy that memory seems now. He is beautiful and I cannot tear my eyes from him. I want him again. I have never wanted a man and now I do. I want him. I want to love him, to be his.

I turn my eyes forcibly to the other occupant who is sitting near the piano. I wonder if he is the pianist I've been hearing and he nods his head as if confirming my thought. But that is impossible, hearing thoughts that haven't been spoken. He too is beautiful, not as much as the doctor though. He is younger though, barely a man, with hair of bronze and my heart inexplicably aches for my baby boy.

"We don't mean you any harm." The doctor implores warmly, his hands held neutrally in front of his body. I cannot tear my eyes from his lovely face, even though my throat is burning with a thirst that doesn't seem natural. It is all wrong. I should not be alive, I should not be moving. I cannot be in Heaven. And Hell wouldn't be so fortunate with attractive men.

"Why-" I say, drawing a flavorful breath into my lungs. The new taste of air startles me into distraction for a second before I am reminded of my original question. "Why am I not dead?"

Neither man moves to answer me and their silence is particularly devastating. So maybe this is indeed Hell and I am doomed to live without the child I so desperately long to be with. The bronze haired man-child sighs and glances at the doctor, his eyes as heavy as my heart.

"Esme, it's best if we explain things in another location." He speaks my name as if he knows me and I feel ripples of desire running down my body for this strange doctor. I want to go with him; I want to follow him wherever he leads me. But that newly borne vicious part wants to run far away from these beautiful creatures.

"Yes." I whisper.

He smiles at me lightly, friendly. But his eyes are alert and I realize he knows. He knows the viciousness bubbling under the surface of my skin. The young one looks at me and then at the doctor, his eyebrows raised. He looks impressed. The doctor returns him a soft gaze and leads the way out of the room. I follow him, wary when the man-child takes up the rear. I am afraid of him attacking me from behind. I am afraid that I now know the rear is the best tactical place to attack someone from. This new knowledge, these new feelings, they are all welling up inside of me. They are confusing, strange, different. I do not like it.

"Where are we going?" I manage to ask, my eyes, racing between the man in front and the man in the back.

"Someplace safer." The doctor answers, his voice light and reassuring.

We reach a door and beyond the door, a tangle of forest. My breath catches in my throat as the doctor takes off in lightening speed, disappearing swiftly into the old trunks. The young man comes next to me, whispers "Follow" and disappears much like the doctor did. I do the only option that is available to me. I follow.

My steps are sure and swift. I know I am running at an increased speed but I might as well be strolling lazily in the forest. The trees melt to either side of me and I follow the warm scent of the doctor. He is ahead of me, not that far, but just enough that I cannot see him. But I am aware of him, of the space he is occupying and how much I want to be occupying the same space. I can tell where the man-child is too. His scent, his presence is slightly different than the doctor, but with a similar underlying note. As if some of the doctor's blood flows through the boy.

They are slowing down in front of me and I can smell their scents coming to a stop. I slow my feet, even though the sensation of flying through the woods is a pleasant one. They have come to a full stop in a small clearing in front of a giant cliff face. I do not know how far we have come but I know there is not a mountain like this in at least twenty miles from where I have lived my whole life. I recognize the location as easily defensible, my mind mulling over this new information.

"Who are you?" I ask as we settle into an uneasy calm.

"Esme, we mean you no harm. My name is Carlisle Cullen and this is Edward—"

"Cullen." The young man interrupts. "For all intents and purposes, his son."

The doctor—Carlisle smiles at the young man as if he has just given him the greatest gift in the world. But this Edward is too old to be his son. Or perhaps Carlisle is too young to be his father. It does not take my new abilities to sense that something is abnormal here.

"I know you are confused right now about our relationship, but its best right now if you let Carlisle explain in full." Edward tells me.

How did he know I was pondering their relationship? My thoughts must be more clearly written on my face than I assumed.

"I can hear thoughts." Edward explains swiftly, hoping to ease some of my confusion. It works. I look at him in wonderment.

Once when I was little, I went to a fair. There was a gypsy there who claimed the ability to read minds and see the future. My father pulled me away from her table, telling me that it was a sham, that the human mind was the one sacred place no other person could visit. I snuck back when he was busy looking the other way and let myself into the gypsy's colorful tent. She took my smooth child's hand in her wrinkled one and told me that my death would be extraordinary. I ran from her in fear back to the comforts of my father's leg.

"Esme, I don't want to frighten you." Carlisle says, pulling me from my thoughts. I smile at him, attempting to prove that I am at ease. I find myself taking small steps towards him, as if his very presence is drawing me in.

"We're not like other members of society." He tells me. "We're vampires."

I wait for a punch line. None comes. I do not panic, not quite yet. The myth of the vampire had been the story told around campfires in high school, when we all giggled in fear. I remember them telling us the vampire fed off blood, that they were immortal, that they burned in the sun, that crosses and garlic were repellants to them. I giggled alongside the rest of my classmates the day I heard that tale, but always slightly feared the creatures of the night. However, I did not feel as though these men intended to harm, no matter what they were calling themselves.

Realization dawns on me slowly, like a wave breaking over the shore. Carlisle did not just mean him and Edward when he selected the pronoun 'we'. He meant me as well. I am a vampire. Suddenly, I am rather aware that my heart is no longer beating, that my vision is ten times clearer than anything I could ever imagine. I understand the new urges I have and the reason my bones have mended.

My mind speeds as the blurry memories of vampires float from the past. There is one word that rings clear over and over again in my ear. Immortal. I will never see my baby boy again.

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Thanks to all who read and review.

Comments are always appreciated, they give me a nice warm fuzzy feeling.


	3. Good Luck With Shooting the Moon

A/N: As a special treat for the release of New Moon, I decided to post this chapter a little earlier than I originally intended. My sister and I are off tonight to a midnight showing in our Team Carlisle (obviously me) and Team Jasper shirts and we are beyond excited. Enjoy this chapter and enjoy the movie, but don't enjoy them both at the same time. Though, if you want to print out a copy of this chapter and read it while you're waiting for the movie to start, go right ahead. I fully plan on bringing my knitting with me tonight so I have something to do while we're waiting in the theatre with three hundred screaming teenage girls…and their mothers.

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Chapter Three: Good Luck With Shooting the Moon

I let the emotions run over me and collapse to the ground in a wave of sobs. I want to cry but no liquid falls from my eyes. I am left heaving for air as the realization of what I am destroys my hopes. All I want is to see him again, to hold his tiny body in my arms. And now that one thing is taken away from me. The one escape I had is gone. Why couldn't they just let me die?

"I'm sorry." Edward says his voice overwhelming with compassion. I look at him in shock and then remember that he can read my thoughts. He knows why I am upset; he knows what I tried to do to myself.

"It's not your fault." Carlisle says. He bends down so he is close to my crumbled form. "It's mine Esme. I'm the one who changed you. I remembered you from when I set your bone, I remembered your scent. And when I smelled your blood flowing that night, I wanted to save you. I needed to save you."

I want to smack him for being so polite. I want to hate him, I want to be mad at him from stealing my death away from me, but I am not. Because when I look into his eyes, I forget everything but him and the desire to be with him, to love him. It throws me off balance for a minute and I am left struggling for a proper train of thought as he looks on compassionately. I am losing myself in the deepness of his golden eyes and my hand goes up to touch the pale perfect skin of his cheek. I cannot control my actions, my hand is being controlled by my heart. He does not flinch as I skim my fingertips over his face, nor does he react. It is an enjoyable sensation, I cannot deny that. His skin is firm under my fingers, inviting. I pull myself up so I am kneeling next to him and I let myself drift close to him. This desire is new to me.

It takes me a few seconds of gently pressing my hand to his cheek to remember that we are not alone. I flit my eyes to Edward and drop them and my hand in embarrassment. What I was feeling was not appropriate in a public place and especially not appropriate with a man I just met. I move away from Carlisle, but not before he brings his hand to my face and pushes a strand of hair that had fallen into my face behind my ear. He does it quickly and efficiently, but I am on the verge embarrassing myself again when he touches me. I want him.

"Do not blame yourself." I find myself saying to the doctor. I do not want him to feel guilty about giving me a second life. I do not want him to associate guilt with my name. I fear that every time he looks at me, he will see nothing but dissapointment. "You couldn't have known."

"There are some rules we need to explain to you Esme." He tells me, rising to his feet. And even though I do not need his help, he still offers his hands to help me to my feet. A gentleman. When we touch, I find myself unable to look in his eyes, concentrating instead on the feeling of his hands entwined with mine.

"We are not like other vampires." He continues, as soon as I am on my feet. Edward sits on a large rock as if preparing for a long story and I join him. "Have you ever heard tales of the vampire?"

I nod once. My mind fills up with a shadowy figure stalking a young girl. He pounces and starts draining blood from her neck. Edward chuckles next to me and I jump slightly. It is going to be hard to remember that my thoughts were no longer my own. I blush as I realize that he knows everything I feel for Carlisle, my hidden desires.

"We are not like other vampires." Carlisle reiterates. "We do not feed from human blood. Almost all others do, but Edward and I are different. We can survive off the blood of animals. All vampires can survive off animal blood, but the taste of human blood is a great temptation. It is our natural choice of nutrition. That is why you are so thirsty. You need to feed."

"I have to kill someone?" I ask in horror. The idea of blood sounds so tempting to my new brain, but the thought of taking a life still crushes heavily on the part of me that is still me.

"No. You can choose to be like Edward and I. You can feed off animals. It is not as, for lack of a better word, tasty, but it is much easier on the conscience. We are predators Esme, but we do not have to be monsters." He assures me. "I have a lot more to teach you, but I know you must be uncomfortable with your thirst. We can hunt first if you like and then continue with the rest of the lessons?"

"I did not realize there was so many rules that a class needs to be held." I smile at him.

"Our world is a very dangerous world. As your creator it is my job to instruct you in the rules before I let you go out in the world." Carlisle tells me.

Go? He wants me to leave? Sadness begins to overcome me. I do not want to go. I want to spend forever with this man.

"You can always choose to stay with our clan." Edward tells me. He slides down the rock so he is next to me. "With you we could call ourselves a proper clan and not just those two strange vampires who like animals." He allows a smile to form on his features and I can tell that he truly does what me to stay.

"Of course you are welcome to stay with us. I do not want you to go—I mean, I did not want to make you feel trapped as if you had to stay." Carlisle stumbles a bit over his words. It is rather becoming.

"I would like to stay." I answer sweetly.

I find myself looking at Carlisle through my lashes as I bend my head slightly forward. A strand of hair falls across my shoulder and I absentmindedly twirl it between my fingers. Carlisle follows the movements of my fingers with his eyes and I realize that I am flirting. I kind of like it.

"Maybe we should start hunting?" Edward suggests. I am jealous of his powers to read minds. I wish I could know what was Carlisle was thinking right now. If he was thinking of me.

"Close your eyes Esme and tell me what you can smell." Carlisle says, coming to stand next to me.

I inhale deeply, sensing his addictive scent, Edward's smell and the forest in general. I can smell blood pumping through tiny hearts and while it does not smell appealing, it smells wet. My thirst is ever so apparent on the back of my throat as I locate where the smells are coming from. Little woodland creatures scurry away from us for safety and even though my eyes are closed, I know where they are scurrying. I can smell a large animal, I think a deer, being stalked by an even larger animal, a bear. The bear smells more appetizing than the deer, but not by a lot.

"Can you smell the hunting bear?" Carlisle whispers.

"Yes." I tell him, not opening my eyes.

"Good, go find him." His hand presses gently on my back, urging me on.

I open my eyes and spring into a full run, following the scent of the bear's blood. I weave in and out through trees until about three miles away from the clearing, I slow. The bear is near me, stalking the deer, not aware that it too is being hunted. The forest is very dark. It is the night of the new moon and the only light in the sky is the tiny pinpricks of the stars. It does not hinder my ability to see the bear as it passes lumbering before me. It doesn't stop me from seeing his pulse beat in its furry neck. I crouch down low and spring, landing forcibly against the larger creature. The force of my hit causes the bear to tumble to the ground and I untangle myself from his large frame and prepare to strike.

My teeth easily tear through the skin and though the bear takes a few good blows at me, soon his blood is flowing in my mouth. The thirst is fading but as soon as the bear runs dry it returns at full force. I step away from the lifeless creature, slightly appalled at what I had done. Carlisle and Edward appear out of the woods, and I feel a bit embarrassed. My hand goes to wipe the traces of blood off my face and mouth as I look sheepishly down at my feet.

"You did well." Carlisle tells me. "There is no reason to feel ashamed. What you did is necessary for your survival and the survival of the humans around you. The thirstier you are, the harder it is to resist human blood."

I imagine a human lying lifeless in front of me as opposed to the bear and my stomach turns. I cannot take life when I have been so eager to give it. Everybody is somebody's child, everyone was small and in a womb once. I do not think I could be the cause or reason why a life is no longer here.

I do not want to kill. All I have ever wanted was to bring life into the world. If I failed, if I killed a human, I do not think I would be able to meet my eyes in the mirror. I could not live with the monster inside of me.

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Reviews are always welcomed and fully appreciated. On a side note, I am writing this particular fic because I do relate so much with Esme and her desire to be a mother. All I want to be is a mother too. (Don't tell my boyfriend, he doesn't need to have a heart attack right now.) The last paragraph is something I actually said to my best friend when we were talking about if we make it as vegetarian vampires (not the best conversation to have while waiting in line at a restaurant, everybody stares at you funny).


	4. Chapter 4: Comparisons are Easily Drawn

I hoped everyone thoroughly enjoyed New Moon. I thought it was loads better than Twilight. I actually liked this movie. I have high hopes for Eclipse (my personal favorite book) now. One thing I wished was for more Volturi Carlisle. He looked absolutely delish in the old school digs. I would have loved another two and a half hours of that. I wasn't a fan of Esme's vamped up appearance. I liked her softer look from the first movie better. The waves in her eye, the not as intense smoky eye.

Enjoy!

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Chapter Four: Comparisons are Easily Drawn

They teach me swiftly about the life of the vampire. Without sleep, my days stretch into one long endless day. There is no time for the immortals, no need to pass the hours with tiny numbers. Night is as clear as day with my new eyes and I revile in my new freedom. I still ache for my little boy in the quiet moments when I cannot keep my mind occupied. They told me that I would be barren, that I could no longer be what I wanted to be, a mother. But Edward with his ability is always on hand to play me a sweet tune on the piano to distract me from those truths.

The doctor goes back to work a few days after I come. He leaves me in the trusting hands of Edward. I find out the small house we are living in is thirty miles out of the way of society and sixty miles away from the hospital where he found me. He runs to that hospital everyday now, although he tells me that he has given notice and in a few weeks, we will move to another place. Someplace where I won't be recognized. Someplace where we can start again.

Until then, Edward keeps me occupied while Carlisle is gone. We hunt constantly, my thirst never seeming to fade. I want to test my control around humans but I am nervous when I cannot even control myself in the presence of animals. Edward is in no rush to test me and we spend hours combing through the forest. He is quiet around me and often I catch him looking at me with a small glance of wonderment.

I lay my kill onto the earth, the lion's body folding in its emptiness. I look up to meet Edward's eyes and once again, I see that emotion flash in his eyes.

"What?" I ask him, sweetly smiling.

"It's nothing." He replies shaking his bronzed head. He looks at me one more time and then gathers his thoughts. "You remind me of my mother."

I am startled enough to sit back on my heels. He already told me he was seventeen when he was changed. I am just twenty six, old enough to be his sister certainly, but not his mother. And I know of how he came to be a vampire, of what his mother had requested from the doctor.

"Not the way you look." He goes on quickly. "The way your thoughts are. I couldn't really hear her thoughts back when I was alive just bits and traces, but for some reason I imagine they were very similar to yours. Full of compassion, full of love."

It is the highest compliment anyone has ever paid me. I do not know how to respond, but I feel incredible amounts of motherly love towards this boy. For that what he really is.

"She was a good mother. I have to keep on reminding myself. Everything from before is so blurry. But her face is clear and the way she smelled when she used to kiss me goodnight." He continues, his eyes lost in the memory.

I know what he means. My past is growing more and more distant. But my baby's face is startlingly clear and whenever the edges of that memory begin to distort, I pull up every little detail fiercely.

"I like you Esme. You being part of our clan, our family, it just feels so right."

"Thank you, Edward. I cannot lie and tell you this is what I expected with my life. But if I do have to live forever, I would very much like to spend it with you and Carlisle."

He smiles at me and we continue our hunt to satisfy ourselves.

Later, I find myself alone with blank paper. Carlisle has not yet return from his shift at the hospital and Edward is buried deep into a book. My hand picks up a fresh paper and I let the inspiration flow out of my arm. A house begins to take shape under my hand, a modest two story brick. I add some decorative landscaping to the front of the house and then eagerly begin planning the interior. Rooms begin to form on the paper and I can almost smell the fresh wood as I sketch bold pine rafters.

I am so involved in my creation that I am slightly startled when Carlisle appears beside me. He sits next to me on the roomy loveseat, so close that our cloth covered thighs are almost touching. I cannot explain my accelerated breathing and so I lightly smile at him.

"I did not know you were such a good artist." He says, taking a few of the papers from the table to look at them. His eyes are intently studying them, taking in minute details.

"Architecture mostly. I find the essence of people too hard to be captured on paper. But the rise and dips of a building, the way the rooms fit together like a puzzle, present endless amounts of opportunity. My husband and I, when we were first married, renovated a house. I helped with some of the gutting and really got into the designing." I tell him. His brow furrows slightly over the word husband.

"I guess I am not married anymore." I say.

"Yes. Technically and legally you are dead. You are not married."

"Good." I do not expect the relief that washes over me. He was never a good husband to me and I realized a long time ago that I would never have to return to him. But I am relieved anyway to hear Carlisle confirm my guesses.

"We could build this house." Carlisle says, gesturing to my sketches. "If you want to of course. We are going to move in a few weeks and it might be nice to build a house there that could be ours." Ours. I enjoy the sound of that word. It seems to promise that Carlisle feels for me as I could feel for him.

"Why did you change me into a vampire Carlisle?" I ask him, catching him unaware with my question. He gives me a long look and then sighs.

"For a very selfish reason."

"And that reason is?"

"When I set your arm for you, I was charmed by your personality. Then, when I smelt your blood that night in the hospital, I was drawn to it. Another doctor told me your story. He told me about your son and how a man had seen you jump from the cliffs. And then I saw you, lying there bruised, bloody and ready to die. But I did not want you to die. Because I wanted you for myself. I think I have wanted you since I first met you. And I apologize for stealing your death from you."

He knew when he changed me. He knew of my son and my pain. He knew why I threw my body from an impossible height. And yet he still changed me because he wanted me. Without knowing if I would want him back.

"I do not really mind that now." I reassure him.

"I understand that you may not share some of the same feelings I have for you. I promise not to make anything uncomfortable for you."

"Who says anything about me being uncomfortable?" I interrupt him.

I slide myself so that our thighs press together, not just our thighs but our upper bodies as well. His hands come up as he turns his body towards mine. Softly, one hand finds its way to the middle of my back, its partner snakes through my hair. Our faces come close together and I find myself trembling. Lips softly touch and we part looking for confirmation in each other's faces. Without hesitation, he draws my face close to his and I can feel his lips smile as we kiss again and again.

I have never felt anything like this. I have never known love with tenderness. My husband would mash his mouth hard against mine. Carlisle peppers my lips with sweetness. I find myself intoxicated by the taste of him in my mouth and I eagerly want more. Our bodies press tightly together and my hands travel over his back.

It is thrilling, the kisses, and each one gets deeper and deeper. I do not want to stop. I am not even sure if I will be able to stop. We do not need to stop for breaths and so we continue. And I lose myself in his arms. A slight cough from the next room is all it takes for Carlisle to pull away. I duck my head in embarrassment. Apparently, Edward can hear our thoughts from a room away. And even though I cannot see him, I imagine his face is twisted up into a smirk.

"I'm sorry." Carlisle apologizes before disappearing from the room, his eyes never meeting mine.

I should follow him but I remain on the couch. My heart aches inexplicably as I think of the golden eyed man. I love him. I want with him what I have always wanted. A child. It is not because I long to hold a baby, to coo softly in his ear, to rock him to sleep. It is because I want to see love come alive. For that what a child is, pure love. That dream is lost to me now.

I pick up the pencil again and shuffle to a blank piece of paper. My hand is hesitating, unsure of where to start. I am so used to geometrics and straight lines that it is difficult to draw curves and softness. But slowly my son starts taking shape on the page. And when I finish, I look at it. There is no denying it is a good drawing. Small, detailed fingers and toes. The whorl of a dimple in a cheek. The bow of his tiny mouth slightly curved into a smile. But what shocks me the most is what I have accomplished with this portrait. I have captured his essence, something I could never do before. It haunts behind his tiny eyes staring at me from the page. The pain starts deep in my stomach and vibrates throughout my chest. Forceful sobs escape my throat and I want to shed tears but I cannot.

He is my first, my last and my only.

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As always, reviews are welcomed and cherished.


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